February 22, 2019

April 08, 2019

December 27, 2017

The Family and Social Services Administration has announced a moratorium on the certification of any new assisted living, adult day service or adult family care providers until further notice.

The agency said a federal change in deadline for regulatory compliance last year spurred the announcement.

In March 2014, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services implemented a new “Settings Rule” that laid out requirements for services and settings to be defined as “home and community-based” in order to participate in Medicaid home and community-based programs, according to Marni Lemons, deputy director of communications for FSSA.

CMS noted that these requirements could result in substantial changes to many states’ home and community-based services.

States were initially given until March 2019 to implement transition plans to bring their Medicaid programs into compliance. Subsequently, CMS extended that transition date until 2022.

“We anticipate that this additional three years will be helpful to states to ensure compliance activities are collaborative, transparent and timely,” stated Brian Neale, CMS Deputy Administrator, in a May 9, 2017 bulletin announcing the extension.

Lemons said because they were given this extra time, FSSA was taking this opportunity to “take a pause.”

“We agree with them that that was a good idea,” said Lemons.

The halt went into effect Jan. 19 and was announced by the Indiana Division of Aging on Jan. 22.

“(This) was us saying, ‘OK, if you’re working on this to frantically get something done you can stop and work on other priorities for now because we’re just taking a pause and we’ll get back with you sometime before too long to give you some additional guidance,’” she said.